


sooner or later, i will be with you

by susabei



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Art Heals, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Luna Lovegood needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susabei/pseuds/susabei
Summary: Luna reflects on loss.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood & Pandora Lovegood
Kudos: 7





	sooner or later, i will be with you

**Author's Note:**

> Round 7 of the QLFC. Still Keeper for the Wasps.
> 
> Theme was to write about a character who expresses themselves through art. 
> 
> Content warning for: Death, grief, isolation/loneliness (something I feel we're all going through collectively rn), and a hint of childhood ostracization. Children are cruel. 
> 
> 1114 words

The first time someone stopped being friends with Luna, she was three years old. Though, she supposes, it could have happened earlier, what with her not being able to remember her time as a baby and toddler.

It was with the daughter of the papermaker in town: a Muggle. A year or so older than Luna (she's not too sure, and it doesn't really matter), she had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she didn't want to play with her. This, after an afternoon of building mud castles and stacking rocks. The friendship was short lived, but the image of the girl seething in her face ( _ calling her weird _ ) and leaving remained for years to come, echoing in her memory after every single rejection and abandonment.

Luna doesn't bat an eyelash when people leave now. The first time, it hurts. The second time, it hurts as well. The tenth, sixtieth, and hundredth time, it hurts too, but it's easier to pretend that it doesn’t. When a new person walks into her life, Luna preps for their inevitable departure. It doesn't take away any of the melancholy of being alone once more, but it sure helps with the clean up. Less names for her parents to memorize, only to have to discard them the following day. Week. Month. It's easier for them to remember the names of her imaginary playmates. Imaginary friends. Imaginary siblings. They never leave.

It doesn't stop her from speaking to flesh and blood people. Despite everything.

When the familiar twang of abandonment plucks at her heart once again, she no longer weeps in synchronization. Rather, she tunes up her own instrument (a balalaika, an ocarina, a hurdy gurdy) and plays in harmony with her pain. Accompanying it, but never imitating it. Her loneliness can't affect her if she makes something beautiful out of it, right?

When her mother left, it wasn't out of any sort of cruelty. It wasn't because she was tired of Luna. Or because she thought her incessant need to question everything and never shut up about her curiosities was annoying. It was completely out of her hands. One moment she was there, and the next, she simply wasn't. With her, the woman took a heavy chunk of Luna's heart, leaving only a hollow space that echoed and seized with pain whenever something brushed up against it.

Afterwards, none of Luna's instruments sounded proper alongside her grief. Every strum of her balalaika was too delicate, every whistle of her ocarina too springy, every hum and vibration of her hurdy gurdy too holy. For a few fleeting seconds, she considered picking up her mother's beloved accordion (affectionately named Diana), but even gazing at it was too much for her heart to handle.

So it was that Luna turned to the paints left vacant on the windowsill of her mother's workshop.

In the morning light, everything looks blue in the room where Pandora Lovegood spent most of her time (and her last moments). From the curtains to the wood flooring, everything has a shroud of coolness blanketing it as wholly as the dust. How long does it take for dust to settle? Too quickly, it seems, because this room has only been empty for a month. That's too soon. Too soon.

The first paint that Luna sticks her fingers in is blue, because they all look blue. It is the seaglass blue of the pier that her mother took her to when she was little and learning how to swim.  _ Witches don't swim, _ she had said,  _ but you are more than a witch. _ It is with this blue that she tracks the lines of her underpainting. Draws out the bones and the wiring.

The second paint she scoops up in her hand is the blue of her mother's eyes: heather and near grey. Shining like a star. With this color, she grazes the top of the canvas, swishing her arm back and forth as if she were whipping up clouds into peaks for a pie. Though the paint is thick, it drips down from her placement of it, showing her that even the colors she lays down are out of her control.

The third paint she layers on is the cornflower blue of the flowers in her mother's garden. Deep and engulfing as the sea she replicates with its color. Almost violently, it thrashes on the canvas, reaching up into the pale sky and curving to show the side of a face.

The fourth paint picked is indigo. As was her mother's favorite scarf. The sun is no longer under the horizon, but rather just peeking out from behind the distant hills, bathing the world in a warm filter. It's already starting to change her artwork into something she never intended to make. Still, she continues onward, the indigo paint being splattered and dragged along nonsensically, going where it tells Luna it needs to be.

Already, the painting is changing. The rays of the closest star in the solar system granting her a new filter from which to view it.

The fifth paint to be added to her artwork is green, warm and leaning towards the color yellow. It is the color of the lemongrass picked and gathered by her mother, tied and hung to dry next to her garlic and thyme and rosemary. This paint is subtle. Luna dabs at the surface of her painting with her finger, pressing down faintly in areas where earth is needed.

The last paint chosen is yellow: the color of her mother's laughter. Golden and rich, catching attention as a spider's web catches morning dew. It is smeared on  _ both _ of her hands and pressed down with such force, that she wonders if she'll break through the fabric. The paint is applied so thickly that it  _ gushes  _ and  _ squelches _ as she removes her hands, leaving behind little peaks of paint where it wants to stick to her body. The excess material sags and drips down from her open handprint, splayed fingers making them look more like spread wings than human appendages. 

With the morning light, Luna stands back and observes her piece. 

Magical paintings are all portraits or proper landscapes. They imitate reality and do not append, amend, or enhance. She knows now what others will say of her work, but does not bother thinking about it. She has imitated her own reality. The shape of her memories, the smell of her grief, the color of loss. 

It's new. Different from the music which she uses to decorate her time. But good. Something to decorate a space.

She doesn't name her artwork. She waits for her mother to name it for her.


End file.
